A Very Fat Life

Bob Bitchin

A Homeless Man and Old Blanket

So the other day Jody & I are landlocked in a traffic jam that could only be found in Los Angeles. Bumper to bumper cars, moving what seems to be backwards, as we are trying to get to a party in a neighborhood we haven’t visited in 20 years or so. Now I gotta tell ya, I was not in the best of moods. My attitude had been left on the boat about 20 miles behind me. As I sat there I vented about all the little things that had gone wrong that day. Poor Jody sat there, forced by circumstances beyond her control, to listen to my tirade of bitching about problems we’d hit on our refit, people not paying their bills, and how we hadn’t had a day off in over five months. She did have the option to abandon ship (or vehicle in this instance), but the area we were in was not conducive to an evening stroll. Not if you meant to keep your

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Starboard Attitude wallet. The third consecutive signal turned red just as I was about to cross the intersection of Adams and Hoover. I slammed on the brakes and watched in my rear view mirror as the kid with the backwards baseball cap in the car behind me almost slammed into me, and thought for the hundredth time that baseball caps were meant to be worn with the bill in front. It added to my frustration. And then, in mid sentence, where I was about to launch into another tirade on just why life sucked so bad and how the world was falling in on me, I saw a man. Now keep in mind this is an area where most people lock their doors and load an M-16 prior to transiting. Standing on the corner was a man who looked to be about in his late 50s. He was walking around the corner wearing a grey blanket with blue stripes on the ends, slung over his shoulders as a kind of shawl. It was a little cool out, as the sun had just set. Slung under his arm was a small gym bag, and it was pretty obvious these were his total assets. Since we were stuck at the signal I watched him, and for a brief second he looked up and our eyes met. I could see him quickly assess the year and cost of my vehicle, then his eyes returned to mine and he smiled. I swear I even saw an imperceptible smile in his eyes. Just then a passerby said something to the man, and he turned and exchanged a greeting

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Bob Bitchin and a smile. He walked towards us around the corner and started down the street. As he walked the smile stayed on his lips, and even more so, in his eyes. There was no doubt about the fact that this was a very happy individual. All of a sudden I started to smile too. Jody looked at me as if I’d lost what few marbles I had left. Here I was, sitting in a very nice vehicle, with a woman that loves me, after leaving my office where I put together a magazine about the lifestyle that I love. I had driven past a yacht that I have lived on for almost 15 years and sailed the world on, and was on my way to a gathering of friends. And for the past 45 minutes I had been sniveling, bitching and moaning about how unfair life was treating me. Then I see a man who has gathered all his belongings about him, and was “cruising” through life pretty much the way we were when we were cruising on the Lost Soul. So what’s all this got to do with sailing, you may well ask? Simple, all of a sudden I had this epiphany! I knew why people who are cruising are happier than those who are stuck in “life” trying to escape. I knew why cruisers smile, and I knew why that man was smiling and I wasn’t. It was because everything that was important to his life was with him, and he didn’t have to worry about anything else. He had his world under control.

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Starboard Attitude I, on the other hand, since leaving the world of cruising, have become enmeshed once again in the day to day fight trying to keep up with the civilization that is hitting me from every side. Captain Woody had said something to that effect a couple weeks ago when we were sitting and enjoying a cold one down at the local watering hole. I asked him how he liked being back “in harness” and he told me that it was a lot easier “out there,” because all he had to worry about was keeping things within his reach in working order. His only concerns were simple - what to eat, where to point the boat, and if something broke, he fixed it. The outside forces didn’t exist, except for the occasional storm, and even those came and went and were dealt with in a quick manner. Then they were over.

I have known for over three decades that the cruising life is what I love, and was lucky enough to live it for a full decade.

Now I know why I love it and can’t wait to get back to it, thanks to a homeless man in an old blanket.

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Bob Bitchin

A Very Fat Life

There is a choice everyone who ever cut the lines to experience the cruising lifestyle had to face, and most folks don’t realize it is a decision that has to be made in order to make it all happen. That moment of decision comes when we realize the pursuit of the cruising lifestyle comes at the cost of contentment. To be content is to sit safe in a secure harbor, enjoying the safety and convenience of a comfy slip, with wireless Internet and dockside electricity. To pursue the happiness and adventure of cruising means you have to leave that content state of mind and head out where the adventure begins. I can’t think of a single time I left on a voyage when I didn’t have doubts about what I was about to do. I don’t mean a fear of what might happen. For some reason I never did have to face fear. But I did have to face the fact

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Starboard Attitude that the easy life of living aboard in a safe and comfortable harbor was about to be replaced by nights at sea, or days spent dodging squalls. No one ever leaves on a voyage without knowing that things like that will occur. But for some unknown reason, we all do cast off those lines and sail out “there” to face the unknown in order to try and find the happiness and adventure of the cruising lifestyle. I have always believed that the adventure begins when something goes wrong. Maybe that is just my way of coping with the knowledge that I was trading security for adventure. I guess I never really even considered staying in that safe harbor. To feel alive I had to untie the dock lines. That was what I got into the sailing lifestyle for in the first place. Over the past 30 years I have met thousands of cruisers all over the world, and all seem to have the same glint in their eye when they start to talk about past voyages. That glint turns to a spark when they discuss future cruising plans. Those who have gone before us have left a legacy that has passed down through the generations. Today, the cruisers of the past like Tristan Jones, Eric Hiscock, and Irving and Exy Johnson still live in the hearts of the cruisers who started living the lifestyle in the ‘60s, ‘70s and ‘80s. People like Herb Payson, Lin and Larry Pardey, and Tania Aebi carried on that legacy into the 21st century. There is a new breed of sailor-adventurer

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Bob Bitchin out there now. Zac and Abby Sunderland, Jessica Watson, and even our own Captain Woody carry on the tradition of the adventure side of cruising. But the real cruiser-heros are the folks you never hear about: the couple who work toward the dream of cruising and then make that dream happen. They are the true cruising heros. I believe that the real secret to the happiness we all seem to find in cruising is not in doing what one likes or feels secure in, but rather it is enjoying what we have to go though in order to live the lifestyle. Sure, it feels good to lie in the sun on a warm summer day, anchored or moored in a secure and comfortable anchorage. It is great! Ah, but the feeling you get inside after seeing a squall coming at you mid-ocean, and then feeling the juices start to flow as the seas get dicey and the wind whips up... there is the true spice in our lives. And the glow you get inside as the squall passes and the seas subside... Sitting behind the wheel (or just letting the autopilot take over!), looking ahead to the clear sailing ahead... that is a feeling you can never duplicate sitting at anchor. No, in order to live, in order to make the memories that will last the rest of your life, you have to cast off the lines of civilization and take the responsibility for your own destiny. You have to fight the good fight and sail through the storm in order to get that inner glow only a sailor who has danced with Mother Nature can

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Starboard Attitude ever know. Sitting at a waterfront bar with other sailors, you will never hear about the beauty of a day spent at anchor in safe harbor. No, the stories that rouse men’s souls always start with something going awry, and the adventure that follows as the daemons of the misadventure turn into the true spirit of the cruising lifestyle; living a little more each time the tale is told. You will find that no matter how bad the ordeal of a particularly hard voyage may have been, in the telling, that ordeal soon becomes an adventure, and one that gives you a glow inside in the retelling. None of us know how long we may live, and there is little we can do to affect the length of our lives, but there is something we can do about how thick that life is. It’s not how long we live, it is how much we cram into those years. I want a very fat life!

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Bob Bitchin

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Starboard Attitude

About The Author

Robert “Bob Bitchin” Lipkin was born in Los Angeles, California in 1944. He spent 28 years riding motorcycles around the United States and Europe, writing of his experiences in all of the major motorcycles magazines of the ‘70s and ‘80s. In the early ‘70s he acted as roustabout and bodyguard for famous motorcycle daredevil Evil Knievel, and later produced “CycleExpo,” one of the largest motorcycle shows on the West Coast. During most of those years he lived aboard various sailboats that he would buy in rundown condition and restore to sell. He went on to create BIKER NEWS, BIKER Magazine and TATTOO Magazine. In the mid ‘80s he sold his magazines and retired. He spent several years sailing the Pacific, first on his Formosa 51’ ketch Lost Soul, and then on an aft-cockpit Formosa 51 named Predator. In 1991 he purchased a derelict 68’ ketch, which he renamed Lost Soul. A year later, after extensive repairs, he departed with his ladyfriend Jody on a voyage that would take them to the four corners of the globe. Five years later they returned, and he founded LATITUDES & ATTITUDES Magazine, which has gone on to become the largest magazine in its field. He also created the weekly TV show Latitudes & Attitudes with his friend Darren O’Brien. He now spends his time between sailing and his home in the Sierra Nevada mountains, in Berry Creek, California.

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Other Books By Bob Bitchin

(All Bob Bitchin books are available at BobBitchin.com, CrusingOutpost.com and Amazon.com)

Letters From The Lost Soul

By Bob Bitchin

This is the story of the voyage that created Latitudes & Attitudes Magazine and the television series of the same name. It is also responsible for creating Cruising Outpost Magazine.

Excerpt from Letter From The Lost Soul

The crew for this leg consisted of one large, tattooed captain, one well-endowed first mate (Jody), two deck slaves (Canadian college students Luke and Joel), and, of course, our newest kidnapped, Kari. We finally made it out of Vavau and headed north to Niuitopatupo Island, which is the northernmost island in the Tonga chain. On the way out of Vava’u, another seam let go in our new mainsail. This was almost a record, as the last tear happened leaving Bora Bora, at two

hours out. This one lasted two and a half hours after we’d gotten it fixed in Niafu by the sail-maker from the yacht Jacaranda. We sailed the rest of the way to Niuitopatupo under a reefed sail, which was slow going, since we only had 10 knots of wind. That was just part of the fun. About halfway (90 miles), we noticed our bilge pump going off excessively. A quick check showed we were taking on water from a one-inch hole in our main engine exhaust system. I went to shut down the through hull only to learn that the gate valve was stuck. Oh joy. I tried to shove a rag in the one-inch hole. Kinda like the little Dutch boy and the dike. It then became a three-inch hole. It seems that the galvanized elbow had rotted through from the inside. Now we were taking on water faster than a Jewish mother takes on guilt. In fact, more water than our 3,000-gph bilge pump could handle. No problem. I turned on our secondary emergency bilge pump. This could almost handle it, but just to be safe I figured I’d check the hand bilge. Oops. No handle. Forgot to get one before I left home. Oh well, no problem, we still have the three-inch-high pressure emergency gas-powered bilge pump. Er, except we loaned our last gas to a man in a panga who was out of fuel as we were leaving Vava’u. So we had no gas. The next 10 hours were spent in deep prayer, as I turned on the

engine to lessen the water leaking in. With the engine on it was just the exhaust water coming in (and filling the boat with exhaust so we all had to stay outside). If I shut the engine down the water came in a three-inch gush. Too much for the bilge pumps. Just so you don’t worry too much, if it had become a problem we could have shut down the engine and plugged the exhaust from the outside, and sailed in with no problems. I just like to make it sound hairy for literary purposes (honest mom!). We made it into Niuitopatupo and spent the day repairing torn sails, fixing exhaust elbows, (ain’t West epoxy great stuff?), and kicking back.

The Sailing Life

By Bob Bitchin

This is a collection of insights into why people love the sailing and cruising lifestyle. Each one has an example of a lesson learned at sea.

Excerpt from From The Sailing Life

You’ve just pulled out of Gibraltar and headed around the southern tip, on your way to Ibiza, Spain. Your significant other is down below, and you’re on watch. You stand holding the wheel watching the ships that squeeze through the bottleneck at the straights of Gibraltar, and wonder, “How many centuries have men felt this wonder?” In front of you is all the history you have read about, and you are about to discover it for yourself, at your own pace. An unsurpassed feeling of anticipation fills you.

• • • • •

The boat is going to right itself. The fifty-foot wave that just broke over you slammed you down a bit, but the boat took it, and is pop-

ping back up just like it’s supposed to. You tighten the main sheet to where it should be, and check the reef lines. Everything is okay. You hollar down to the crew below that it’s over, and then it hits you.

What if the wave had been bigger? What if the stays hadn’t held? The mast could have broken! Or the keel bolts broken off! What then? The boat would have capsized. And what if the safety harness hadn’t kept you in place when the wave hit, or, God forbid, what if you hadn’t put it on? Look behind you. There is nothing back there, and you wouldn’t have been missed for an hour or so. At least until the next person was going to come on watch. Can you imagine what that would be like? Treading water and watching the boat sail off without you?

It always seems to come after the worst is over. During the storms, the ordeals, or the tight reef entrances. But when it’s over. That’s when it hits. Fear! Gut wrenching fear. • • • • •

Your arrival in the Marquesas was supposed to be after 22 days, and here you are, pulling in after just 18 days. The storms that pushed you were hell. The rain seemed to find every place that leaked on the boat, and you were really getting pretty tired of trying to find a dry spot in the bunk.

Beans and cold stew had been your meal more nights than you might have hoped, and the

auto-pilot going out at the halfway point didn’t help much either.

But there, in front of you. Nuku Hiva! Look at the spires. The harbor looks like heaven. More colors of blue in the water and more colors of green on the hills than you even imagined, and you are here on your own boat.

You’ve done it! As you look at the small tear in the mainsail, a feeling sweeps over you. You prepared your boat to the best of your ability. You planned for the storms, and the fuses that went out, and the wet weather.

And now you are pulling into your first South Pacific paradise under your own power. The storms, the seas, the 2,800 miles behind you seem like nothing. You can’t help but smile, as you wave to a passing cruiser who is heading out of the channel.

“Yeah!” You say to yourself, almost aloud. “Yeah, I made it. The boat made it. The crew made it. And only a handful of people on Earth can ever say they have accomplished such a feat.

The feeling is so strong you almost feel a chill.

Pride. The pride of conquering unknown peril to accomplish a goal. • • • • •

The squall hit late at night. Your wife was on watch, and she hesitated to wake you, but the sails had to be reefed, and it takes two.

Since she’s on watch she feels it’s her place

to go out and handle the reeflines, so you turn the boat into the wind to let the sail luff, and watch as she ties each line. All the miles behind you, and she still has the same feeling for the boat. And for the lifestyle.

She finishes tying the lines and gives the high-sign. Everything is okay. You turn down wind to fill the sails, and adjust the sheet line. The rain is coming down hard now, and as you look up you see her walking between the house and the lifelines.

It had been warm on her watch, so she was wearing a bathing suit. Then the rain hit so she has a poncho on. You look up from the winch and she’s standing there, rain running down her face, with the biggest grin you’ve ever seen. Your heart melts.

Love. Pure and simple. • • • • •

There is no other lifestyle on this water-planet that can evoke such feelings, such depth of emotion, as cruising. The challenges that meet you only make them stronger. Being in charge of your own destiny becomes a way of life, and most cruisers find, if they ever stop cruising they can’t return to their old lifestyle. But then again, who the hell would want too?

A Brotherhood of Outlaws

By Bob Bitchin

A Brotherhood of Outlaws is a novel, and has been called the most relevant look at the outlaw bikers culture in the 70’s & 80’s era ever written. It was initially sold as hard cover by Bentree house Publishing, and is currently in it’s 6th printing. It was translated into German and was a best-seller in Germany.

Excerpt from A Brotherhood of Outlaws

I glanced up from my speedometer and saw the broadcaster eyeballing down on me. Hell, I hope the pack is centered. I would hate to go to all this horsecrap and lose out on any of the exposure. My fatbob Harley was running as good as it had ever run and the feel of the vibrating power came right through the handlebars. All I could think about was the snake behind me. I looked into my rearview mirror and once again my heart beat a little harder. Jesus H. Christ, there is no better feeling in the world than leading 30,000 bikes down the

road. Unless it might be leading 40,000 bikes down the road. Just before we passed under the bridge I looked back up at the broadcaster. I had seen him before, at the park. He was kind of a little guy, but he seemed to know the score. I like him. Most of the newsmen that were sent to cover this protest were cocky new, because, after all, it was just a bunch of bikers sniveling about their rights being stepped on. Makelray was different. Like he knew I had plans for this group. I don’t know how, but he knew.

Passing under the bridge made us sound even louder. The thunder roared and it was beautiful. I glanced next to me at Rom and he had this big shit-eating grin on his face. I guess the sound was getting to him too. Rom and I had been through a lot in the last two years together, and this was going to be the payoff. I reached into my cutoff jacket and felt for my security. It was my 357 Magnum. The heft alone made me feel good. We turned off the Golden State and onto the Pasadena freeway, toward the civic center. Hell I hope those cops got the blockades up and the traffic re-routed. If they don’t, I would just as soon take this pack through downtown Los Angeles. I was sick and tired of the bureaucracy bullshit that had been going on for the last few days and right now I really didn’t give a rat’s ass if they were

ready or not. We got a point to make and brother are we going to make it. We turned off the Pasadena and onto the Hollywood freeway. Just one more mile to go. As we dropped into the hollow under some bridges the echoing sounds of the pack came back to me and I was ready for anything. I could ride like this forever. Our off ramp loomed ahead and I slowed the pack from 45 to 30 miles and hour. No use dumping some sidewalk commando and listening to the government turkeys harp on unsafe riding or other such horsecock. This day was set aside for bikers and dammit, that’s whose day it is. Period. As we approached the civic center I could see all the police there. A quick glance up showed a couple of helicopters in the silver sky. I could see this was going to be a well-chaperoned event.

Emerald Bay

By Bob Bitchin

A novel featuring Treb Lincoln and others from A Brotherhood Of Outlaws. But now Treb is living on a Sailboat, and an explosion in Emerald Bay in Catalina starts he and his friends on an adventure that ends up leading them to Central America and right into the middle of a CIA partnership with the drug cartels.

Excerpt from Emerald Bay

The San Pedro Channel was pretty calm and there were four- to five-foot swells spaced very far apart. It made the 120-foot boat roll a little, but not enough to be uncomfortable. She got up to her cruising speed of 22 knots and settled in, while the partiers did their damnedest to drink the bar dry.

On the aft deck, a bunch of girls were dancing to the music being piped over the speakers, and much to the enjoyment of the guests and crew, a couple of them started to strip. It was normal for them to do since most of them worked at Shipwreck Joey’s back in LA, which was one of

the nicer titty flop bars.

Matt was the bouncer at Joey’s, and he was acting as master of ceremonies and wardrobe assistant. As the girls would take off a piece of clothing, they’d hand it to him. He would smile and then throw it over the side.

A trail of clothes followed the boat almost all the way to Catalina.

On the bow, Treb, Dick, and Rom passed a bottle of Southern Comfort and a joint.

“Well Bro, you gonna miss this kind of life or what?” Rom asked.

“Why should I miss it?”

Dick looked at him hard.

“In case you didn’t notice, you’re getting old and you just got married.”

“Who you calling old?” Treb smiled. “I ain’t no older than you, and I can kick your ass just like always.”

Dick started laughing and passed the joint. Treb saying he could kick his ass had always been a standing joke. When it came to fighting, there was no one who could beat Dick.

Dick Bondano and Treb had met 13 years earlier in a bar fight in Las Vegas. Treb had come into this small bar just off the strip while he was riding across country.

About five or six very large truckers had decided they wanted to see if this big biker could handle a whipping, so they jumped him.

Dick had been sitting at the bar nursing a

three-day drunk after getting fired from his job, and he relished the idea of a real kickass brawl. He watched as three truckers took turns on the big man, and soon he could see the biker really didn’t need much help, but he wanted in, so he jumped in with both feet.

At six feet and 180 pounds, Dick wasn’t all that large, but his Hawaiian ancestry gave him a mean look, and he was wiry as hell. Besides that, he had been raised in a martial arts family. His father, his grandfather, and all of his uncles were Masters in Filipino Kali, the ancient art of weaponry. Dick had been trained since childhood in Kali and Jeet Kun Do. He had worked as an instructor at Bruce Lee’s old school, the Jeet Kun Do Academy, and until Vietnam, martial arts were his life.

After all the killing in Nam, he decided to opt for a little less violent occupation and ended up in Las Vegas working as a guard at a chemical company.

As he waded into the fight beside the large biker on that day 13 years ago, his life changed.

Ever since then, they had been inseparable friends. They rode around the country for awhile and then settled in the South Bay area of Los Angeles. Treb had opened a gym and Dick had gone back into martial arts with a vengeance. Now, at 38 years of age, he owned a martial arts school in Torrance and was a coach for boxers and wrestlers as well as teaching his real life love,

kickboxing. Whenever things would start to get to him, he’d enter the ring as a sparring partner and let off steam.

It had always been a joke between Treb and Dick that Treb could kick his ass. They both knew it wasn’t true and laughed about it.

“Ok,” Dick laughed,” so when did Karen say you’d have to sell the bike?”

Treb laughed and swung at him haphazardly. When Dick caught his hand they tumbled to the deck, rolling and laughing like a couple of kids.

“Hey, come on you guys!” Rom laughed and he started to pour Southern Comfort over the two on the floor.

Dick’s hand flashed out of the jumble and pulled Rom’s feet out from under him. In a few seconds there was 750 pounds of biker in a pile with Southern Comfort adding to the sticky mess.

King Harbor

By Bob Bitchin

A Treb Lincoln novel that follows Treb and his friends from the docks of King Harbor in Redondo Beach, California to a remote island in the Pacific where they end up saving the lives of hundreds of islanders.

Excerpt from King Harbor

As I climbed aboard Lost Soul I remembered why I hate boats! No matter how you baby and pamper them, they never seem to get enough of your attention. They just seem to find ways to remind you that they are the important one in the relationship. When I was younger I often wondered why it was they were referred to as she. After a few years of living aboard and crossing a few oceans, I started to understand the similarities. Like a woman, they seem to get jealous if you spend any time with another boat, and if you don’t come home just one night they will make your life miserable.

It was a typical King Harbor morning in

King Harbor Southern California. The sun was shining, the seagulls were soaring overhead, and bikini clad cuties were rolling along on wheels on the road in front of the marina. After spending the previous couple weeks delivering a new Catalina 42 sloop up to the Bay area, I was real glad to be back where the sun shines. Four hundred miles uphill is never a good sail, but this delivery had gone pretty much as planned.

I was delivering a new Catalina 42 from Marina Del Rey up to San Francisco for a broker I did a lot of deliveries for. After leaving Del Rey I sailed up past the Channel Islands in perfect weather. I sailed on a tight reach up to Point Dume, and then made a few tacks up past the Islands. I pulled into the Cojo anchorage and sat there waiting for a good weather report to make it around Point Conception. I timed my arrival at Point Conception for just before dawn, when the northeast tradewinds were the lowest, and once around that notorious landmark I’d just hugged the coast for the rest of the voyage.

It’s a long stretch of beautiful coastline as you make your way up, sailing past Big Sur and Monterey. It’s beautiful, but dangerous, and with absolutely no place to pull in if you hit any trouble. It’s about as rugged as a coastline can be.

I found myself enjoying the trip, watching as I paralleled Highway One. In my previous life, when I was riding motorcycles, this was my favorite getaway; throw a sleeping bag on the bike

and ride up Highway One. It doesn’t get any better, and I relived a few of the trips as I sailed passed Lime Kiln Cove and Big Sur.

After dropping off the boat at the dock in San Francisco, I picked up my paycheck from the broker who’d hired me to deliver the boat and grabbed a taxi to the airport. I couldn’t wait to get back home. Of course, on my return, my baby made it known to me that I had better stop staying out for weeks at a time. Being left by herself, she always seems to get a real attitude. The longer we’ve been together, the more attention she wants when I neglect her.

After this voyage up north, she was particularly displeased with me. “My baby” is my home, a 56-foot stays’l ketch I named Lost Soul. I’d saved her from the bottom when she was about to be scrapped.

After she’d gone around the world a couple times she’d been abandoned for a few years, and was in pretty sad shape when I found her. Since her shape pretty much matched my bank account, it seemed we were destined for each other.

Biker

By Bob Bitchin

This was the first book by BB, written in the late 70’s as he rode around the country and the world writing for various motorcycle magazines. These are all true stories. If you are offended by sex, drugs or Rock & Roll you may want to pass on this one!

Excerpt from Biker

That evening I started looking for a hotel early, not wanting to be left out in the weather. After I tried three of them I gave up, and settled for a campground in Monte Carlo.

The folks who ran the campground were the epitome of the word assholes. They were ripping off folks left & right for 37 francs a night to camp motorcycles and only 20 for cars. Even so, there was no other place in Monte Carlo a biker could stay, so the campground was where I ended up.

That night I decided that Europe didn’t really have much that I didn’t have back in the good old US of A, and I made a mental note to start head

ing back to Frankfort for a plane ride home.

Once the Bitchin boogie fever hits me slow travel is all over. I aimed the bike out the gate of the campground at 6:30 in the morning, and by 11 AM I had crossed into Italy, ignoring the odd looks by the Gestapo at the border, headed north, away from the Mediterranean and up into the Italian Alps. I zig-zaged across the French border three or four times, and soon was crossing through the St Bernard Pass and into Switzerland.

When you cross into Switzerland there is a tunnel that was almost two kilometers long, and I really got a kick out of it, nut when I went over St Bernard Pass I found that there was a tunnel five kilometers long, and inside the temperature was a constant 30 degrees.

Since it was in the 80’s outside I was riding in just my T-Shirt, and when I hit the tunnel I nearly froze my butt off.

just in case, and to keep from having what little I have left in life taken away from me by lawyers and other blood-suckers I guess I will just label it as FICTION! There, now no one can sue me for anything.

But those of you who were there, you will know. You will also know when I stray from the facts. Ya gotta have a little poetic license, right? I mean, hell, if Tom Clancy can use the Royal Family and sitting Presidents in his “fiction” I guess I can use a bunch of degenerate bikers in mine, right?

By the way, degenerate is not a derogatory term in this book. In fact, at the time this DIDN’T happen (wink-wink, nod-nod) it was my fervent hope that I had reached the pinnacle of being a truly degenerate and sleazy biker!

So let’s set the scene for the time period. It was the early seventies. Viet Nam was just over, the love-in’s were fading into memories (sigh) and bikers were at the top of their game. It was just before the “Man” started to hassle us as criminals, and it was a time when young girls… well, let’s just say it was a good time to be a sleazy outlaw biker!

Okay, if this had happened (wink-wink, nod-nod) it would have been about 50 years ago, and if I were there I would have been in my late twenties.

As we reach senility sometimes things

that happen get foggy, and things that didn’t happen seem to warp into some kind of fuzzy reality. So once again, this never happened, and when it did, it was a long time ago, and in my alleged drug-addled state of mind, it could have all just been a dream.

Or a nightmare.

Read at your own risk!.